Quotes from Edith Pattou

That's the trouble with loving a wild thing: You're always left watching the door.

And telling a story, I suppose, is like winding a skein of spun yarn- you sometimes lose track of the beginning.

The joy I feel is immense; it burns inside me as though I have swallowed a piece of the sun.

East of the sun and west of the moon.

She would search for him. In the land that lay east of the sun and west of the moon. But there was no way there.

It was the difference between walking with a stranger and walking with your heartmate. It was the difference between working for duty and working for love.

A pine needle fell in the forest. The hawk saw it. The deer heard it. The white bear smelled it

Here. After so long waiting. Her purple eyes. Torn cloak. Skin pale, sheer as ice. Exhausted. But unafraid.

They journeyed far and the white bear said, Are you afraid? No, she replied. I am not afraid.

It is odd, the twists that life will sometimes take. The ewe that you think will give birth with ease dies bringing forth a two-headed lamb. Or the ski trail that you have been told is treacherous, you navigate easily.

It was not a monster that lay sleeping on the white sheets. Nor a faceless horror. Nor even the white bear. It was a man. His hair was golden, glowing bright as a bonfire in the light of the candle. And his features were fair, I suppose, but he was a stranger and that somehow was the greatest shock of all- that I had been lying all these months beside a complete stranger.

I crossed the room to him. I love you, I said in a rush, afraid I would change my mind. Charles, he replied.

That's the trouble with loving a wild thing: You're always left watching the door. But you also get kind of used to it.

Neither Rose nor Charles liked to talk much of their adventures with the trolls, but some of the so-called softskins whom they had brought out of Niflheim, as well as the crew of the ship Soren had hired to go north to find Rose, must have spread the story, because for many years afterward, there were tales of a race of trolls living on top of the world. Only Rose and her white bear know the whole truth of it.

Where is it? I asked, willing him to tell me. He laughed suddenly, and I could hear the full-throated, grating sound of the white bear's laughter in it. East of the sun and west of the moon, he said.

And I realized how much more complicated life is without the benefit of magic. Rubbing linseed oil into my blistered hands, I thought wistfully of how magic lets you skip over the steps of things. That is what makes it so appealing. But, I thought, the steps of things are where life is truly found, in doing the day-to-day tasks.

Where there was life, there was also hope.

I knelt by the design. Yes, there was the sun rising. But the white form I had always thought to be a cloud was a bear. I could see it now, upside down. White bear, isbjorn, stood for north. Father had not been able to help himself. The truth was there, too. Truth and lie, side by side.

That indeed would be a great accolade, Monodonock stuttered, his hands frenziedly plucking at his spikey hair, but the more I think on it, I believe I should miss my little home in the Blue Stack Mountains too much. And indeed, it is an important posting; you never know when the gabha might start stiring up trouble again...

For all that I loved the old tales of magic, I did not actually want there to be talking animals and mysterious requests on storm-tossed nights. Such things were for stories and ought to remain there.

And Rose would have had no time at all on the loom were it not for Widow Hautzig's rheumatism. When her rheumatism was acting up, the widow would take a long rest, sometimes even as much as a fortnight if it was a particularly bad bout. "Thank God for Widow Hautzig's rheumatism," Rose would say every night before bed. Mother once overheard her and scolded her, so Rose was careful to whisper those words to herself from then on.

I even wrote a white-bear poem. It began Ghost bear wanders, always alone; king of the north, dispensing death from his traveling throne. It was shortly after this effort that I decided I wouldn't be a poet after all.

The troll language was very difficult to learn, bearing no relation to Njorden or any other language I had heard... As I learned more and more, I was reminded of times I had to pick out the stitches of a particularly complicated piece of sewing. One word might unravel a whole set of words, and then I'd come to a knot and have to begin all over again.

Glowing. The moon through a doorway. Breath hard in my throat. Heart full to burst. The moon through a doorway. And its light… Hope.